[PDF] Divine Simplicity And The Triune Identity eBook

Author : Jonathan M. Platter
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 226 pages
File Size : 27,3 MB
Release : 2021-07-05
Category : Religion
ISBN : 3110735962

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There has been a recent revival of interest in the doctrine of divine simplicity in systematic and philosophical theology, following decades of intense reflection on the tri-personhood of the Christian God. While recent studies have produced a greater appreciation of patristic and scholastic theologies, they have not yet engaged in dialogue with proponents of the trinitarian revival that emerged in the latter half of the twentieth century in anything other than polemical terms. This book offers a theological defense of the doctrine of divine simplicity through careful reading of both exemplary historical theologians and Robert W. Jenson, an important American contributor to the trinitarian revival. After tracing continuities and discontinuities amongst select historical theologians, the book approaches Jenson with a multivalent account of divine simplicity. The result is a more nuanced interpretation of Jenson’s theology, an account of divine simplicity that responds to perceived problems, and new constructive proposals for divine simplicity in trinitarian theology.

Author : Steven J. Duby
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 240 pages
File Size : 49,26 MB
Release : 2015-12-17
Category : Religion
ISBN : 0567665682

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Steven J. Duby examines the doctrine of divine simplicity. This discussion is centered around the three distinguishing features: grounding in biblical exegesis, use of Thomas Aquinas and the Reformed Orthodox; and the writings of modern systematic and philosophical theologians. Duby outlines the general history of the Christian doctrine of divine simplicity and discusses the methodological traits and essential contents of the dogmatic account. He substantiates the claims of the doctrine of divine simplicity by demonstrating that they are implied and required by the scriptural account of God. Duby considers how simplicity is inferred from God's singularity and aseity, as well as how it is inferred from God's immutability and infinity, and the Christian doctrine of creation. The discussion ends with the response to major objections to simplicity, namely that the doctrine does not pay heed to the plurality of the divine attributes, that it eradicates God's freedom in creating the world and acting toward us; and that it does not cohere with the personal distinctions to be made in the doctrine of the Trinity.

Author : Paul R. Hinlicky
Publisher : Baker Academic
Page : 367 pages
File Size : 39,95 MB
Release : 2016-07-19
Category : Religion
ISBN : 1493402749

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A Fresh Articulation of the Unity of God This volume critiques various ways divine simplicity--which suggests God's being is identical to God's attributes--has shaped Christian theology and offers a fresh articulation of the unity of God. The author proposes that the concept of divine simplicity, carried over from the Greek metaphysical tradition, was heedlessly incorporated into the language of Christian trinitarian theology during the patristic period. He identifies numerous problems that have resulted from its retention in postpatristic Christian dogmatics, arguing that uncritical use of the concept renders the biblical God inexpressible and unknowable. This major contribution to contemporary trinitarian dogmatics also contains a unique approach to the problem of Christian-Muslim relations.

Author : Jordan P. Barrett
Publisher : Fortress Press
Page : 242 pages
File Size : 20,82 MB
Release : 2017-12-01
Category : Religion
ISBN : 150642483X

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Divine Simplicity engages recent critics and address one of their major concerns: that the doctrine of divine simplicity is not a biblical teaching. By analyzing the use of Scripture by key theologians from the early church to Karl Barth, Barrett finds that divine simplicity developed in order to respond to theological errors (e.g., Eunomianism) and to avoid misreading Scripture. The volume then explains how divine simplicity can be rearticulated by following a formal analogy from the doctrine of the Trinity in which the divine attributes are identical to the divine essence but are not identical to each other.

Author : Jonathan M. Platter
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 364 pages
File Size : 30,45 MB
Release : 2021-07-05
Category : Religion
ISBN : 3110736012

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There has been a recent revival of interest in the doctrine of divine simplicity in systematic and philosophical theology, following decades of intense reflection on the tri-personhood of the Christian God. While recent studies have produced a greater appreciation of patristic and scholastic theologies, they have not yet engaged in dialogue with proponents of the trinitarian revival that emerged in the latter half of the twentieth century in anything other than polemical terms. This book offers a theological defense of the doctrine of divine simplicity through careful reading of both exemplary historical theologians and Robert W. Jenson, an important American contributor to the trinitarian revival. After tracing continuities and discontinuities amongst select historical theologians, the book approaches Jenson with a multivalent account of divine simplicity. The result is a more nuanced interpretation of Jenson’s theology, an account of divine simplicity that responds to perceived problems, and new constructive proposals for divine simplicity in trinitarian theology.

Author : Robert W. Jenson
Publisher : Wipf and Stock Publishers
Page : 209 pages
File Size : 49,91 MB
Release : 2002-05-10
Category : Religion
ISBN : 1579109624

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This book presents a bold venture in theology, combining a presentation, explanation, analysis, and reinterpretation of trinitarian language. Rejecting the assumption that traditional trinitarian discourse is useless in an age of cults and sects, Jenson points to a profound and provocative renewal of trinitarian piety and reflection understood as a remedy for spiritual desolation and powerlessness. Proceeding on the premise that any radical analysis of the formula ÒFather, Son, and Holy SpiritÓ must work from biblical statements, Jenson investigates the significance of two biblical identifications of God: ÒGod is whoever freed us from EgyptÓ and ÒGod is whoever raised Jesus from the deadÓ. In opposition to the notion that God is to be understood simply as timeless being, Jenson shows how the memory of God's acts and the presence of God in Christ leads to a hope for the future based on the promise of the spirit.

Author : Pui Him Ip
Publisher : University of Notre Dame Pess
Page : 242 pages
File Size : 37,67 MB
Release : 2022-11-15
Category : Religion
ISBN : 0268203601

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This book establishes how the doctrine of divine simplicity was interwoven with the formation of a Christian Trinitarian understanding of God before Nicaea. For centuries, Christian theology affirmed God as simple (haplous) and Triune. But the doctrine of the simple Trinity has been challenged by modern critics of classical theism. How can God, conceived as purely one without multiplicity, be a Trinity? This book sets a new historical foundation for addressing this question by tracing how divine simplicity emerged as a key notion in early Christianity. Pui Him Ip argues that only in light of the Platonic synthesis between the Good and the First Principle (archē) can we make sense of divine simplicity as a refusal to associate any kind of plurality that brings about contraries in the divine life. This philosophical doctrine, according to Ip, was integral to how early Christians began to speak of the divine life in terms of a relationship between Father and Son. Through detailed historical exploration of Irenaeus, sources from the Monarchian controversy, and especially Origen’s oeuvre, Ip contends that the key contribution from ante-Nicene theology is the realization that it is nontrivial to speak of the begetting of a distinct person (Son) from a simple source (Father). This question became the central problematic in Trinitarian theology before Nicaea and remained crucial for understanding the emergence of rival accounts of the Trinity (“pro-Nicene” and “anti-Nicene” theologies) in the fourth century. Origen and the Emergence of Divine Simplicity before Nicaea suggests a new revisional historiography of theological developments after Origen and will be necessary reading for serious students both of patristics and of the wider history of Christian thought.

Author : Peter J. Leithart
Publisher : InterVarsity Press
Page : 230 pages
File Size : 46,7 MB
Release : 2023-12-05
Category : Religion
ISBN : 1514002175

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Discussion about God's work of creation are often overwhelmed by questions such as the age of the earth and the relationship between divine creation and evolution. Without completely ignoring these issues, this rigorously grounded theological interpretation of Genesis 1 engages thinkers like Plato, Martin Luther, and Karl Barth.

Author : Jacqueline Service
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 233 pages
File Size : 26,51 MB
Release : 2024-07-08
Category : Religion
ISBN : 1978715161

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That God is the perfection of all-blessed abundance, and the source and context for creation’s well-being, tends merely to be assumed in theology. Yet, how does God enact all-blessedness and actualize God’s own abundantly enriched life? And how might such a reality be relevant to human well-being? Addressing these questions in Triune Well-Being: The Kenotic-Enrichment of the Eternal Trinity, Jacqueline Service traces the dynamics of Divine well-being through Scripture, Christian metaphysics, and a synthesis of Orthodox (Bulgakov), Catholic (Von Balthasar), and Protestant (Pannenberg) Trinitarian theologies to argue that God’s “all-blessed” life, the glory of well-being, is symbiotic with triune self-giving (kenosis); a concept identified as “kenotic-enrichment” or “enriching-kenosis.” Such a trinitarian exploration not only offers a fresh perspective on the contested topic of kenosis but goes to the heart of a doctrine of God that implicates the possibility of the well-being of all life.

Author : D. Stephen Long
Publisher : Fortress Press
Page : 447 pages
File Size : 46,1 MB
Release : 2016-08-01
Category : Religion
ISBN : 150641687X

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A particularly nettlesome question is that around the relationship of the confession of God as a simple yet threefold being—the treatises of the one God and the Trinity. Although God as simple and Triune was widely accepted for over a millennium, simplicity has been widely critiqued and rejected by modern theology. The purported error is in conceiving God’s unity prior to the Triune persons, an error begun by Augustine and crystallized in Aquinas. The Perfectly Simple Triune God challenges this critique and reading of Aquinas as a misunderstanding of his doctrine of God. By refusing to begin theology with God’s oneness, who God is collapses into who God is for us, a loss of the biblical and dramatic character of God for us. D. Stephen Long posits that the two treatises were never independent, but inextricably related and entailing one another. Long provides a constructive rereading of Thomas Aquinas, tracing antecedents to Aquinas in the patristic tradition, and readings of him through to the Reformers, taking into account challenges to the classical tradition posed by modern and contemporary theology and philosophy to offer a robust articulation of divine Trinitarian agency for a contemporary age that adheres to broadly considered orthodox and ecumenical parameters.